Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
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Music CD Cover

Artist: Lucinda Williams
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 1998-06-30
Music Label: Island / Mercury
Accessories: Soundtracks:
  1. Right In Time
  2. Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
  3. 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten
  4. Drunken Angel
  5. Concrete And Barbed Wire
  6. Lake Charles
  7. Can't Let Go
  8. I Lost It
  9. Metal Firecracker
  10. Greenville
  11. Still I Long For Your Kiss
  12. Joy
  13. Jackson

Free Music Notes for Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Free Music Review: Masterpiece of American Life
Hit: 5 Stars

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road was a legendary six years in the making with Lucinda recording it from scratch twice and refusing to release a product that was anything short of perfect. And like her two previous albums that is exactly what it is. Weaving her eclectic brand of folk, rock, pop, country, gospel and soul around these tales of barflies, imprisoned lovers, fallen idols, distant memories, aftermaths of relationships and the roads we have taken, and the landscapes we have crossed to get to them, Lucinda Williams has created a masterpiece of American life and an album that is destined to stand the test of time.

Each of these 14 songs is exquisitely put together, yet during a first listen they come off sounding simple. It is only after multiple listens that we hear the level of craft that went into each song. On Drunken Angel, as she sings about a dead musician, "Blood spilled out from the hole in your heart over the strings of your guitar The worn down places in the wood that once made you feel so good" a quivering harmonica solo reminds us of the fragility of life. Singing about the wall between her and her imprisoned lover in Concrete and Barbed Wire a mournful fiddle enters as her voice begins to crack. Background vocals and an organ are added to the mix as the wall described in the lyrics is constructed musically. The arrangements are so real you can feel the wind blowing in through the screen door, the warmth of the sun pouring down onto the back porch, and you can hear the crunch of the car wheels.

These songs are about remembrance, of the faces of ordinary people in bars, the roads we drive down, past lovers and the familiar places and towns we go to find escape. But unlike many songwriters, where memories are filled with ghosts and a sense of hopelessness pervades every song, Car Wheels is about salvation. It is about the quiet moments during the day, when alone, we find ourselves reflecting on the past. She takes simple moments, often vaguely remembered and turns them into moments of realization, all welded together by her economical prose. Themes that it would take most artists a whole album to convey, Lucinda Williams does in one line. Summing up a relationship in Metal Firecracker, one of the best songs on the album, she sings "All I ask, don't tell anybody the secrets I told you"

Her voice is Dylanesque, range-less, forcing her to wring it dry for all it's worth. She cracks, quivers, whispers, shouts, her voice at once detached, angry, demanding, sorrowful and beautiful. By the time the last song "Jackson", comes on we get the feeling of having taken a journey. It is the perfect album closer. A plaintive guitar ballad about moving on her voice belies the lyrics. All the way to Jackson, I don't think I'll miss you much Once I get to Lafayette, I'm not gonna mind one bit Once I get to Baton Rouge, I won't cry a tear for you Once I get to Vicksburg, I don't think I'll feel an urge All the way to Jackson, I don't think I'll miss you much. It's going to take awhile to escape the pain but with each mile she travels the tears quietly fall, like leaves, to the dirt road and we know that once she gets to Jackson, hope and salvation will be there waiting for her.

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road Poster

Six years in the making, Car Wheels somehow lives up to its lofty expectations because of Williams's direct songwriting and her wonderfully unaffected vocals. With assistance from cohorts such as Steve Earle, Williams uses the acoustic accents of Dobros, mandolins, slide guitars, and accordions to add color to her grooves, whispers, and rumbles. Her lyrics are undisguised as she presents to us the travelogue of her memory. We can't wait for 2004! --Marc Greilsamer
Lucinda Williams makes this whole music thing seem so simple: Write in plain language about the people and places that crowd your memory; add subtle flavors of a mandolin here, a Dobro there, perhaps an accordion or slide guitar; above all, sing as honestly and naturally as you can. Of course, it took her six years to achieve this simplicity, an amazing achievement considering the number of knobs that were turned. Her exquisite voice moans and groans and slips and slides--she delivers a polished tone in a coarse manner. On the superb "Concrete and Barbed Wire," soft acoustic guitars are punctuated by electric slide, accordion, mandolin, and Steve Earle's harmony. Williams's deeply personal stories are matched with bluesy rumbles, raunchy grooves, and plaintive whispers. The entire Deep South is reduced to a sleepy small town filled with ex-lovers, dive bars, and endless gravel roads. --Marc Greilsamer
This 1998 Grammy-winning release--Lucinda Williams's popular breakthrough--certainly merits the double-disc "deluxe edition" treatment. And it's hard to find significant fault with anything here: the remastered version of the original album, the second-disc live performance from that year featuring guitarists Kenny Vaughn and Bo Ramsey, and the smattering of outtakes (highlighted by a slower, sadder version of "Out of Touch" than the one Williams ended up releasing). Yet the set misses a glorious opportunity to document one of the more laborious (and notorious) recording projects, one that saw Williams switch cities, studios, and producers three times before she was satisfied with the results. And while the results confirm her judgment, fans would likely find it fascinating to hear a lot more takes from the original Austin sessions (featuring accordion master Flaco Jimenez and keyboardist Ian McLagan) or outtakes from the Nashville sessions with producer Steve Earle, before Williams overhauled the project in Los Angeles with Springsteen keyboardist Roy Bittan. Such a set could have put a revelatory spotlight on the creative process that resulted in an album widely regarded as Williams's masterpiece; instead, this release is more like souvenir snapshots. --Don McLeese

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